The Obsolescence of the Westphalian Model and the Return to A Maximum State of Exception

A “New Middle East” Following 9/11 and the “Arab Spring” of 2011?—(Neo)-Orientalist Imaginaries Rejuvenate the (Temporal) Inclusive Exclusion Character of Jus Gentium

“…These distorted culturalist constructions are transformed into legal differences to (re)formulate and (re)produce the threatening Arab-Other as object of sovereignty not only to justify a defensive imperial war, but more importantly, to redeem Arabs and in the process provide the Western-Self ontological security-therefore, epistemological coherence. The interpretation of 9/11 and the Arab uprisings using positivist legal doctrines and neo-Orientalist benevolent discourses founded on the perception that an Arab epistemology is inherently resistant to Western modernity-therefore, temporally stagnant-makes it evidently clear that (a positivist) jus gentium is fundamentally characterized by an inclusive exclusion animated by a civilizing mission positing a compulsory 2 My emphasis on Islam is related to neo-Orientalist discourses constructing imaginaries claiming all Arabs as Muslim, and more dangerously, identifying terror as an ethno-religious cultural trait inherent to a civilization inhabiting Arabs and Muslims rather than a modern secular puritan development legalizing a secular process "demonopolizing" violence by authorizing "private" mercenaries to conduct violence (Mamdani 2004;Al-Kassimi 2015. 3 (Anghie 2004, p. 34) alludes to the immorality of positivist jurisprudence distinguishing between law and morality thereby making acts that are immoral legal by stating: "The colonial confrontation was not a confrontation between two sovereign states, but between a sovereign European state and a non-European state that, according to the positivist jurisprudence of the time, was lacking in sovereignty.…”